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Leadership

08/19/2014

Lowell Catlett is an economist, futurist and professor at New Mexico State University. He often starts his talks about the future with a confession you might not expect. He can't really predict the future. Catlett points to research on the accuracy of economists' forecasts on stock prices, unemployment rates and the like. One study looked at 7,000 different economic predictions and found 47 percent of them were correct. In other words, flip a coin and you can beat the economists by 3 percent. Catlett's take-home message is that although you can't predict the future, you can prepare for it. The preparation is what helps us be adaptable when an uncertain future unfolds before us.

Our civic leaders do a great deal of thinking about the future, often setting ambitious, long-term, big goals. Perhaps your own community has a set of these big goals for the future. I know of a large metropolitan region that set a goal 20 years ago to build a light-rail, public transit system; several rural communities that set their sights on luring large auto manufacturing plants that promised hundreds of jobs; and urban neighborhoods that worked diligently to attract large foundation grants they were sure would reverse years of decline.

What about that metro region? Still no light rail. Those communities looking for the big employer? It never happened. The neighborhoods eyeing those big grants? Not a dime. The people in these communities looked ahead and set big goals. But a recession knocked the props out of the tax revenues expected to fund that light rail system. Some other communities landed those auto jobs. And as for that big grant for the neighborhood, the foundations changed their funding priorities. Big goals, like the future itself, are dependent on too many factors out of our control.

Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard, writes about the power of small wins. She notes that doubt and dwindling motivation comes on quickly when a big goal is missed. She advises that, on the other hand, small wins lead to what she calls the progress principle - more confidence, high performance and motivation to keep moving forward.

Another researcher, John Bryson from the University of Minnesota, says that this same principle holds true for communities. He defines small wins for a community as "concrete, completed, implemented outcomes of moderate importance." To get to the big payoff, Bryson says communities need to set a progressive series of small-win goals informed by a sense of strategic direction. Some recent research done at Purdue University seems to confirm this. Looking at over 300 community planning efforts, those that focused primarily on a progressive series of modest, near-time, easy-win goals were more likely to be successful that those focused primarily on bigger, more transformational and longer-term goals.

For example, one rural community was looking to bolster its agricultural economy, and leaders set their sights on repurposing an old outlet mall near the interstate as a distribution facility for agricultural products. They grew frustrated and discouraged after years of no progress. When they regrouped, they focused instead on setting a few more-modest goals based on what they could make happen in the short run.

Setting aside the outlet mall for the time, they settled on organizing a festival to promote one particular agricultural product produced in their area. They worked first on a recipe contest that would be a featured event at the festival. Within a year, they pulled off the festival with great success. It is now an annual attraction, drawing thousands of visitors (and their money) from around the U.S. and internationally. The big goal - the old outlet mall - was too big, too distant and too much out of their control, but a progressive series of small goals took them to a place they could never have anticipated.

So, the next time you and your fellow community leaders are dreaming of the future, try taking one small step. With each step you can see a little further on the horizon, and eventually you may see something that you couldn't have just a step back. That's when you start running.

This column was originally published in quality newspapers in August 2014.

07/18/2014

"Take me to your leader." This cartoon and movie catchphrase, or something close to it, has been uttered by fictional extraterrestrial visitors demanding to see the president or a general, to negotiate some terms before annihilating our planet.

Leadership is a concept we talk about a lot in the context of our communities. Our cities have mayors and other elected officials. Many of our towns and neighborhoods have formal and informal leaders to whom we look to help shepherd us forward.

With some of the kinds of issues we face in communities, it is pretty clear who the leader is in a particular issue. This summer in my community, a large infrastructure project has been going on to fix some stormwater drainage issues. The head of the street department is the city leader who is called upon to take care of this community issue.

Ron Heifetz of Harvard University, along with colleague Riley Sinder, has studied leadership as it relates to public problems; they classify problems into three types. They describe the street drainage problem as a "Type 1" public problem in which both the problem and solution are clear, and there is a clear leader "in charge" of addressing the problem.

Heifetz and Sinder also point out, however, most of the really big problems our communities face are of the Type 2 and 3 varieties in which either the problem is clear but the solution is unclear (Type 2), or both the problem and solution are unclear (Type 3). Leadership for these types of problems is a little less cut and dried.

If the issue in our community is related to economic growth, for instance, raising graduation rates or reducing neighborhood violent crime, what one individual do we go to? If instructed, "take me to your leader" in one of these contexts, where do we go? Heifetz and Sinder contend that there are no single leaders for Type of Type 2 and Type 3 public problems.

What makes these issues even more complex is the fact that we are trained to think of the world in hierarchies, looking up and down some real or imagined pyramid-like organizational chart for the fix to our problems.

There is not, however, anyone at the top of those organizational charts. Who is in charge of assuring all our kids graduate from high school; that everyone has the skills and opportunity to work in jobs that pay a living wage; or that each child has the support they need to maintain a healthy weight?

Heifetz and Sinder's answer to who is in charge of these issues is that we all are. There are no true experts with specialized know-how to fix these public problems. It takes, rather, the collective effort of all of us.

How does a community address these messes when nobody is in charge? The very first step is to move away from the hierarchy mentality of looking up and down, and, instead, adopt network thinking, requiring us to look out to our left and right, forward and backward.

These horizontal networks are how we best organize ourselves to address complex issues. A network is powerful because it optimizes the number of connections that can be made among the member of a network, many more connections than are made in a hierarchy.

Think about a hierarchy with 10 people. One at the top who directs the actions of three people, each of whom directs two people. That’s a total of nine connections. Now arrange those same 10 people in a horizontal circle where they can each connect to the other eight. You end up with 45 connections.

The only chance for our communities to address their most pressing problems is to adopt network thinking, harnessing the power of all the connections that can result. No single person or organization has the knowledge, resources or power to address these issues, but a network of people does.

So, if aliens shows up on your street insisting that you take them to your leader, don't head for city hall. Instead, shake their hand, tentacle, or whatever, and then have your neighbors form a receiving line right behind you.

This column was originally published in quality newspapers in July 2014